Interior Design

Stephen Hawking was born on 8 January 1942[1] to Frank and Isobel Hawking.[26][27] Despite their families' financial constraints, both parents attended the University of Oxford, where Frank studied medicine and Isobel, Philosophy, Politics and Economics.[27] The two met shortly after the beginning of the Second World War at a medical research institute where she was working as a secretary and he as a medical researcher.[27][28] They lived in Highgate, but as London was under attack in those years, his mother went to Oxford to give birth in greater safety.[29] Stephen has two younger sisters, Philippa and Mary, and an adopted brother, Edward.[30] He began his schooling at the Byron House School; he later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school.[31]

In 1950, when his father became head of the division of parasitology at the National Institute for Medical Research, Hawking and his family moved to St Albans, Hertfordshire.[31][32] The eight-year-old Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls for a few months; at that time, younger boys could attend one of the houses.[33][34] In St Albans, the family were considered highly intelligent and somewhat eccentric;[31][35] meals were often spent with each person silently reading a book.[31] They lived a frugal existence in a large, cluttered, and poorly maintained house, and travelled in a converted London taxicab.[36][37] During one of Hawking's father's frequent absences working in Africa,[38] the rest of the family spent four months in Majorca visiting his mother's friend Beryl and her husband, the poet Robert Graves.[33] Politically, Hawking's mother had been "dissatisfied with a Parliamentary Monarchy, exploring alternatives by exposing herself to both fascist and communist ideologies and practices," and "had been a member of the Young Communist League." [39][40]

On their return to England, Hawking attended Radlett School for a year[34] and from September 1952, St Alban